Washington's vaccine hoarding triggers mounting anger on internet: media

NEW DELHI, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Washington's behavior of hoarding vaccines has triggered mounting anger on social media against the United States and the Western world at large, the Times of India (TOI) said Sunday in a report.

"Anti-U.S. and anti-Western sentiment exploded across social media with growing criticism directed at the Biden-Harris administration for sitting on stockpiles of unused vaccines and jealously guarding patents," the report said.

It added that Washington has turned a deaf ear to the severe epidemic situation in countries like India and Brazil, which rank second and third respectively in the global chart of infections.

On Sunday, India's COVID-19 tally reached 16,960,172 with 349,691 new cases recorded in the past 24 hours. This is the fourth consecutive day when over 300,000 daily cases were registered in the country.

Brazil's Ministry of Health reported on Saturday that the country registered 71,137 new COVID-19 cases and 3,076 more deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing its caseload and death toll to 14,308,215 and 389,492 respectively.

Citing a report by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, the TOI noted that the United States will have "an oversupply of up to 300 million or more vaccine doses as soon as July," while many developing countries have to wait for years before they can complete mass vaccination.

This behavior is "undermining the WHO's effort to forestall vaccine inequity," it added.